Communication and collaboration between on-shore management and crew across the fleet is consistently a challenge we hear from our customers throughout the shipping industry.
With the limitation of satellite bandwidth, many ships are operating on their own once they leave shore. It can be impossible to know what’s happening onboard — or how to help handle a difficult situation in time.
ShipIn Systems is the world’s first FleetVision™ Platform, unlocking ship-shore collaboration for global maritime fleets with AI and visual analytics. ShipIn’s platform proactively alerts shipowners, managers, and seafarers to onboard events in real-time, reducing losses by 40% and increasing productivity by 8%.
But awareness of an issue is only the first step in solving the problem. That’s why we’ve been hard at work at creating collaboration technology directly within ShipIn’s platform — and we’re proud to announce that we filed and received a U.S. Patent 11,410,423 or “System and Method for Fleet Management and Communication of Visual Events and Collaboration with the Same.”
Here’s what that means for our customers, and the advantage it provides to fleets around the globe in improving communication processes.
Why We Patented This Innovative Technology
We define collaboration as the ability to simultaneously work together, even from different points around the world. Our collaboration patent covers functionality like contextual comments and chat within the ShipIn platform.
Of course, we didn’t invent collaboration tools like virtual sticky notes, whiteboarding, or the ability to edit a document with multiple authors. However, we adapted that technology to best serve shipowners and operators by adding it to our visual detection system.
This way, you can look at any event that ShipIn’s system has already automatically flagged and leave a note for a member of your team so you can discuss what’s happening — and what to do about it quickly.
What Ship-Shore Collaboration Looks Like with ShipIn
Take this example below of a common notification in our system: “Bridge Lighting at Night while Underway.”
Our artificial intelligence builds this alert by evaluating several factors:
GPS Location: When is it dusk and dawn at these coordinates?
Time: Is it currently between dusk and dawn?
AIS: Is the ship currently underway?
Light Detection: Use the camera to measure how much light is on the bridge. Is it very bright on the bridge?
Light Distribution: Use the camera to measure how light is distributed on the bridge. Is the distribution consistent with the lights being on, or is it simply light pollution from monitors or other equipment?
Alerts like this one can be used to review daily operations or discuss recent events on the sailing commercial merchant vessel without the need to watch and integrate hours, days, or weeks of multiple channels of video. From there, ship owners, Captains, and crew can take appropriate action steps to prevent further damage, initiate safety protocols, or receive updates as needed, facilitating operational efficiencies.
By clicking one level down into each alert, you can easily collaborate with your team by leaving a comment, for example:
The collaboration chat within the system terms an alert into action onboard the ship – driving real behavioral change onboard the vessel.
See How ShipIn’s Innovative Collaboration Technology Can Help Your Fleet
At ShipIn, we embrace innovation in order to solve pressing business challenges, and we hope that our patented technology will help your fleet become more innovative as well.
Using AI and computer vision, ShipIn’s platform detects events onboard in real-time, including bridge conduct, security, cargo operations, and maintenance activities. The system alerts crew onboard and teams ashore to safety or security hazards, operational anomalies, machinery concerns, and more. With patented communication protocols, ship-shore collaboration is possible for the first time in the industry.
